Goodwill of North Florida gets e-commerce center humming with more orders and employees

The Goodwill thrift store concept in North Florida is moving beyond just thrift stores and including more of an eBay style operation.

In the past year, some of the Goodwill items have fetched some decent prices on the Internet, prices such as a baseball with the autograph of New York Yankee legend Lou Gehrig that went for $1,000. A mink coat was sold for $1,500 and a diamond ring was sold for $2,000.

Goodwill Industries of North Florida more than tripled its space for Jacksonville-based operations on ShopGoodwill.com in the past couple weeks.

On May 27, Goodwill officials opened new operations for their e-commerce division in North Florida in an 8,000-square-foot facility at 4655 Lenox Ave. in Jacksonville. That’s a huge expansion for the division that used to operate in 2,300-square-feet of space at their headquarters a few doors down the road at 4527 Lenox Ave., which is the headquarters for the organization. Projected revenue growth is expected to double the money made for the non-profit organization in the next year.

“We quickly outgrew our other space,” said Amber Russo, vice president of retail for Goodwill of North Florida. “We knew we were going to do well in e-commerce, but we did not expect the boom that we got with e-commerce.”

The new facility already has 29 employees with plans to expand to 44 by the end of the year. In its first year, the North Florida operations of Shopgoodwill.com pulled in $1.35 million in revenue with projections to grow to about $2.6 million by the end of this year with about 88 percent of all proceeds going to help with job development in the area.

There are six career centers throughout the North Florida area that Goodwill operates, which draws the funds raised from the sales of goods. Tracy Collins, vice president of public affairs for the organization, said the eventual reach from the funds raised for the organization is extensive.

“We will help place over 12,000 people [in jobs] this year. But 56,000 people utilized our service last year,” Collins said.

What has shifted for fundraising is the prototypical Goodwill store where previously-owned clothes and goods can be picked up with a quick shopping trip. Those donation center outlet stores are still available but the more rare, collectable and high-end goods are sent to the e-commerce center where a couple photographers take pictures, place the images online for bidders to make online bids and then the goods are shipped out of the facility to the person who made the highest offer.

The more lucrative items get featured on Facebook in hopes of increasing the interest and usually the bidding period lasts for five days. If an item seems like it might draw more attention, that period can be extended to 10 days.

When an item is purchased, the workers at the e-commerce center then ship the goods to the person who won the bid. The major difference is that Goodwill of North Florida is now selling goods to buyers from all over the country and the facility remains functional 24 hours a day.

“The only consumer we ever had before [e-commerce] was our Jacksonville consumer, people who lived here and shopped here” Russo said. “Now we sell all over the United States.”

Amy Koebrick is the manager of the e-commerce Goodwill operations and said the rapidly growing demand for goods from the charity poses its challenges.

“There are so many challenges because it’s uncharted water for Goodwill of North Florida,” Koebrick said.

Some of the trickiest parts of the growing business is to figure out the best way to sell things in terms of presentation and bidding time, Koebrick said. She added there’s little control over what will be part of the inventory that’s coming in.

“We don’t order our products and don’t know what it’s going to be,” Koebrick said. “I enjoy evaluating the product and researching the product. I’ve taught people how to do that, I’ve taught myself how to do that.”

There is some pressure in keeping the production moving, Koebrick said. The objective is to keep the inventory moving off the rows and rows of shelves and storage bins at the facility. Usually most items will stay in the warehouse about a week and if they don’t sell at first, they’ll put them on the Internet hoping to attract bids again.

If the item doesn’t move then, it’s shipped back to a Goodwill store and if it isn’t sold there, eventually the items are likely placed in a $2 store in Starke or in what’s called a “pound store” where items are sold in bulk based on the weight of items by the pound. If the item isn’t sold through those outlets, then salvage operations can make offers.

But usually, most of the items posted on the Internet site get sold to some bidder. The North Florida operations are formidable, too, compared to other Goodwill operations in the country.

There are 89 Goodwills on Shopgoodwill.com, the North Florida facility ranks 17th in the United States in terms of value of goods sold, Collins said.